Counseling can be a great tool when it comes to stepparent adoption. There are many different issues and feelings that are intertwined with stepparent adoption, and a counselor can do a great job of helping the family, or just teh child, to sort out all of those issues and feelings. Finding a good counselor can be a wonderful asset to your family as you go through the process of stepparent adoption, as well as after the legal process has been completed. If you are seeing a counselor prior to beginning the process of adoption, it will definetly help your case, to have your counselor in agreement that stepparent adoption would be in the best interest of the child. Having a counselor... more

Holidays can prove to be a very rough time for adopted stepchildren. They can often dredge up memories of the past, and the child’s pain associated with losing his or her birth parent. No matter how uninvolved the parent was, and no matter how great the adoptive stepparent is, part of that child is always going to grieve the loss and rejection of their blood parent. While you will not be faced with the child having feelings of rejection if the absent parent is deceased, the child’s feelings of grief and loss over the passing of their parent will still linger in their minds, especially during the holidays. While it is important to honor the child’s memories and feelings about the past,... more

Hi and welcome to my Stepparent Adoption Blog! My name is Julie, and I have a wonderful family. I have a three-year-old biological son, who I call my little Monster. And I also have a fourteen year old stepson, whom I adopted after his mother walked out of his life. Our family has had many ups and downs dealing with the abandonment of his mother. It has caused him a lot of emotional pain. He was very excited about the idea of stepparent adoption. Once he found out that it was possible he was all for it, even researching online while at school! Stepparent adoption is quite a unique experience from start to forever, because there really is no... more